Climate change is bad for your mental health – and the situation will only get worse
From eczema sufferers to dementia patients, rising temperatures and more common extreme weather events lead to more hospital admissions for mental disorders
Ophelia escapes from Hong Kong for one to two months every summer.
The 34-year-old clay artist has been suffering from eczema since the age of three. She cannot bear the city’s hot and humid summer climate, so she flies to Europe to prevent her condition from getting worse.
“It seems my skin is much better in cold climates and the heat just makes it worse. Sometimes I have bad flare-ups all over my body that are hot and feverish and I just don’t feel like doing anything for a few days until it heals,” she said.
Even after visiting the doctor regularly twice a month for years, Ophelia has seen little improvement.
“The pollution in Hong Kong and the weather has certainly become a lot more extreme throughout the years. People with eczema just don’t do well in the heat because it may make you sweat a lot and that also triggers eczema,” she said.
“I feel really bad if I have a flare up … sometimes it can feel like quite a hopeless and endless situation that will never get better. I had a really bad one that lasted a week and it didn’t calm down and I just hated it – what’s the point of living if life is like this?”
